The Musical Gift

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Sykes
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Music History ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Post War ◽  
First Time

The Musical Gift tells Sri Lanka’s music history as a story of giving between humans and nonhumans, and between populations defined by ethnic and religious difference. Author Jim Sykes argues that the genres we currently recognize as Sri Lanka’s esteemed traditional musics were not originally about ethnic or religious identity but were gifts to gods intended to foster protection and/or healing. Noting that the currently assumed link between music and identity helped produce the narratives of ethnic difference that drove Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983–2009), Sykes contends that the promotion of histories of cultural interaction, exchange, and respect for difference through musical giving has a role to play in post-war reconciliation. The Musical Gift includes a study of how NGOs used music to promote reconciliation in Sri Lanka, the first ethnography of the plight of musicians during the war in the Tamil-dominated north and of Sinhala Buddhist drummers in the south, and a theorization of the relations between musical gifts and commodities. Eschewing a strict binary between the gift and identity, Sykes claims that the world’s music history is largely a story of entanglement between these paradigms. Drawing on fieldwork conducted widely across Sri Lanka over a span of eleven years, The Musical Gift brings anthropology’s canonic literature on “the gift” into music studies fully for the first time, while engaging with anthropology’s “ontological turn” and the “new materialism” in religious studies.

Sonic Generosity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Sykes
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Music History ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
European History ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Jacques Attali

This chapter introduces the concept of the “musical gift” and locates its presence in Sri Lankan contexts. It also considers the historic relations between musical giving and the identity paradigm in European history, and the relations between musical gifts and musical commodities. Finally, the chapter considers writings in the ontological turn and new materialism in religious studies in tandem with writings on secularism to argue for a new narrative on global music history for music studies. Contra Jacques Attali and numerous other writers on the political economy of music, the chapter argues for the persistence of musical efficacy, enchantment, and giving in the modern world.

Scheming

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seán Damer
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Local Council ◽  
Housing Scheme ◽  
Post War ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Voice ◽  
House Building

This book seeks to explain how the Corporation of Glasgow, in its large-scale council house-building programme in the inter- and post-war years, came to reproduce a hierarchical Victorian class structure. The three tiers of housing scheme which it constructed – Ordinary, Intermediate, and Slum-Clearance – effectively signified First, Second and Third Class. This came about because the Corporation uncritically reproduced the offensive and patriarchal attitudes of the Victorian bourgeoisie towards the working-class. The book shows how this worked out on the ground in Glasgow, and describes the attitudes of both authoritarian housing officials, and council tenants. This is the first time the voice of Glasgow’s council tenants has been heard. The conclusion is that local council housing policy was driven by unapologetic considerations of social class.

Reconstituting the International, 1918–1923

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talbot C. Imlay
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Events ◽  
Great War ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Meaning And Purpose ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Do So ◽  
Lengthy Process

This chapter examines the post-war efforts of European socialists to reconstitute the Socialist International. Initial efforts to cooperate culminated in an international socialist conference in Berne in February 1919 at which socialists from the two wartime camps met for the first time. In the end, however, it would take four years to reconstitute the International with the creation of the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in 1923. That it took so long to do so is a testimony to the impact of the Great War and to the Bolshevik revolution. Together, these two seismic events compelled socialists to reconsider the meaning and purpose of socialism. The search for answers sparked prolonged debates between and within the major parties, profoundly reconfiguring the pre-war world of European socialism. One prominent stake in this lengthy process, moreover, was the nature of socialist internationalism—both its content and its functioning.

“Satisfied with the Ruins of Berlin”: The German Capital’s Image in Soviet Graphics of 1945

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 564-575
Author(s):  
Irina I. Rutsinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Visual Image ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

An artist who finds themselves in the last days of a war in the enemy’s defeated capital may not just fix its objects dispassionately. Many factors influence the selection and depicturing manner of the objects. One of the factors is satisfaction from the accomplished retribution, awareness of the historical justice triumph. Researchers think such reactions are inevitable. The article offers to consider from this point of view the drawings created by Soviet artists in Berlin in the spring and summer of 1945. Such an analysis of the German capital’s visual image is conducted for the first time. It shows that the above reactions were not the only ones. The graphics of the first post-war days no less clearly and consistently express other feelings and intentions of their authors: the desire to accurately document and fix the image of the city and some of its structures in history, the happiness from the silence of peace, and the simple interest in the monuments of European art.The article examines Berlin scenes as evidences of the transition from front-line graphics focused on the visual recording of the war traces to peacetime graphics; from documentary — to artistry; from the worldview of a person at war — to the one of a person who lived to victory. In this approach, it has been important to consider the graphic images of Berlin in unity with the diary and memoir texts belonging to both artists and ordinary soldiers who participated in the storming of Berlin. The combination of verbal and visual sources helps to present the German capital’s image that existed in the public consciousness, as well as the specificity of its representation by means of visual art.

scholarly journals An Analysis of the Post-War Community Relations between Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka: A Muslim’s Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Ahmad Sunawari Long ◽  
Khaidzir Hj. Ismail ◽  
Kamarudin Salleh ◽  
Saadiah Kumin ◽  
Halizah Omar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
Post War ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Religious Aspects ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Community Relationship

Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country comprising four of the world’s major religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Buddhists are the predominant ethnic group, constituting 70.19% of the total population, while Muslims make up the second largest minority in the country. There are many records in the history to prove well the cordial relationship between Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka. However, in the past couple of years, particularly during the aftermath of the civil war, tension may be observed in the relationship between these two religious groups. This is due to a campaign undertaken by a several Buddhist nationalist groups whose intensions are to create a division among these respective societies. These groups have been carrying protests against Muslim social, cultural and religious aspects, including issuing Halal certification, slaughtering of cattle, conducting prayer services, etc. Moreover, they have disseminated misinterpretations about Muslims and Islam with derogatory speeches among the Buddhist public, for the purpose of accomplishing above division. Given the above backdrop, this paper attempts to determine the post-war relationship between Muslims and Buddhists in the country, including major interrupting factors, through analyzing Muslims’ point of views. According to the results, there is no remarkable fluctuation in the relationships between Muslims and Buddhists, and Muslims have posited that there are several social, cultural and religious practices them that act as significant barriers to maintaining a better community relationship with Buddhists, such as slaughtering of cattle for meals. Therefore, almost all of the Muslims have been demanding proper guidelines regarding the slaughtering of cattle, the Niqabs (face cover of Muslim women), and other factors related to interrupting a better interaction with the Buddhists for better cordiality, within the context of Sri Lanka.

New record of Hipposideros speoris (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae) from Myanmar hidden in the National Zoological Collections of the Zoological Survey of India

Mammalia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (5) ◽  
pp. 515-517
Author(s):  
Tauseef Hamid Dar ◽  
Manokaran Kamalakannan ◽  
Chinnadurai Venkatraman ◽  
Kailash Chandra
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
New Record ◽  
Zoological Survey ◽  
Museum Specimen ◽  
First Time

Abstract Hipposideros speoris is a small-sized leaf-nosed bat and was thought to be restricted to India and Sri Lanka. Based on a single museum specimen preserved in alcohol housed in the National Zoological Collections of the Zoological Survey of India, we report and confirm the presence of H. speoris for the first time in Pyay, Myanmar.

Who Killed the Concert? Heinrich Besseler and the Inter-War Politics of Gebrauchsmusik

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW PRITCHARD
Keyword(s):  
Social Role ◽  
Music History ◽  
The Real ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
Positive Account ◽  
The Social ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
Post War ◽  
Youth Music

AbstractBy examining the ideas expressed by the German musicologist Heinrich Besseler in his 1925 essay ‘Grundfragen des musikalischen Hörens’, this article attempts to find precedents in Weimar Germany for a contemporary social conception of music, and to trace the effects of this conception on music history between the wars. Although Besseler's position is seen to be complex and not wholly consistent, from his ideal of music as an expression of community (Gemeinschaft) arose two influential claims: that the concert was in crisis because it could no longer correspond to that ideal, and that the real source of communal vitality lay in Gebrauchsmusik, music for everyday use. The article explores the immediate political and musical consequences of these claims, both for the German youth music movement (Jugendmusikbewegung) and for Gebrauchsmusik as composed by Weill, Hindemith, and Eisler. It argues that the social aims of the Gebrauchsmusik movement were in fact best met when combined with an earlier understanding, rejected by Besseler himself, of the concert's own ‘community-forming power’ – a theoretical combination that was to lead outside Europe to the American musical and the Soviet symphony. By contrast, the sidelining of such ideas in post-war Germany was reflected in Adorno's outright rejection of musical community, a move which served to confirm only Besseler's first, negative claim – thereby establishing as normative an ‘autonomous’ conception of concert music and leaving musicology unable to give any positive account of the concert's social role.

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